Backed by music videos for the singles "Undone – The Sweater Song", "Buddy Holly", and "Say It Ain't So", the Blue Album became a multi-platinum success.

Weezer's second album, Pinkerton (1996), featuring a darker, more abrasive sound, was a commercial failure and initially received mixed reviews, but achieved cult status and critical acclaim years later.

Raditude (2009) and Hurley (2010) both featured more modern pop production,[2] along with songs co-written with other artists, receiving further mixed reviews and moderate sales.

Everything Will Be Alright in the End (2014) and the White Album (2016) returned to a rock style that was reminiscent of their 90s sound, mixed with modern alternative production, and achieved more positive reviews.

Lead vocalist and guitarist Rivers Cuomo moved to Los Angeles from Mansfield, Connecticut, in 1989 with his high school metal band, Avant Garde, later renamed Zoom.

Chapman quit after a few early shows; the band reformed as Sixty Wrong Sausages, with Cuomo's friend Pat Finn on bass and Jason Cropper on guitar, but soon disbanded.

[9] Described by Pitchfork as integrating "geeky humor, dense cultural references, and positively gargantuan hooks",[10] it combined alternative rock, power pop, polished production and what AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine called an "'70s trash-rock predilection ... resulting in something quite distinctive".

[30] At the end of the year, Cuomo enrolled at Harvard University, where his songwriting became "darker, more visceral and exposed, less playful", and he abandoned Songs from the Black Hole.

Calling him an "asshole American sailor similar to a touring rock star", Cuomo felt the character was "the perfect symbol for the part of myself that I am trying to come to terms with on this album".

[citation needed] The members of the band were composed of Greg Brown (Cake and Deathray), Matt Sharp, Yuval Gabay (Soul Coughing and Sulfur), Adam Orth (Shufflepuck), and future Weezer bassist Mikey Welsh.

[57][page needed] Although a Homie album was being recorded, they ended up only releasing one song, called "American Girls", for the 1998 film Meet the Deedles.

Frustration and creative disagreements led to a decline in rehearsals, and in late 1998, Wilson left for his home in Portland pending renewed productivity from Cuomo.

In November 1998, the band played two club shows with a substitute drummer in California under the name Goat Punishment, consisting entirely of covers of Nirvana and Oasis songs.

[57][page needed] Weezer took an experimental approach to the recording process of its fourth album by allowing fans to download in-progress mixes of new songs from its official website in return for feedback.

From December 2003 to the fall of 2004, Weezer recorded a large amount of material intended for a new album to be released in the spring of 2005 with producer Rick Rubin.

[96] In early 2006, it was announced that Make Believe was certified platinum, and "Beverly Hills" was the second most popular song download on iTunes for 2005, finishing just behind "Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani.

[99] The Make Believe tour also found the band using additional instruments onstage, adding piano, synthesizers, pseudophones, and guitarist Bobby Schneck.

On May 30, 2008, the Toledo Free Press revealed in an interview with Shriner that Weezer would be unveiling the "Hootenanny Tour", in which fans would be invited to bring their own instruments to play along with the band.

Drummer Josh Freese joined Weezer on a temporary basis to play drums on the tour, while Pat Wilson switched to guitar.

The Gregory Brothers solicited musical and vocal contributions from the band on one of its compositions built around speeches by Rep. Charles Rangel and President Barack Obama.

"Belladonna" includes the songs "Ain't Got Nobody", "Lonely Girl", "Da Vinci", "Go Away", "Cleopatra" and "Return to Ithaka", all of which deal with Cuomo's relationships with women.

Cuomo said the album would tackle "more mature topics" and be "less summer day and more winter night", and suggested the band could return to the recording studio as soon as October 2016.

He kept an archive of song ideas and hired programmers to organize a spreadsheet of lyric snippets by beats per minute, syllable, and key to call from whenever stuck.

On September 10, 2019, the band announced the Hella Mega Tour with Green Day and Fall Out Boy as headliners alongside themselves, with the Interrupters as an opening act.

[201] The European leg saw Weezer, Green Day and Fall Out Boy performing in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Ireland, Scotland and France.

Reviewing their performance at the O2 Arena, London, the Guardian wrote: "Thirty years on, Weezer still dole out taut, punchy, witty powerpop with self-effacing elan ...

[236] Weezer's early material was said to have "embodied the self-awareness of the intelligent alternative rock slacker", and throughout its career, the band has maintained a "heavy guitar-oriented sound over a steady, danceable groove".

at the Disco,[250] Blink-182,[251] Steve Lacy,[252] Taylor Swift,[253] Charli XCX,[254] Mac DeMarco,[255] Real Estate,[256] Dinosaur Pile-Up,[257] Cymbals Eat Guitars,[258] DNCE,[259] Ozma,[260] Wavves,[261] Joyce Manor,[262] Origami Angel,[263] and the Fall of Troy[264] cite Weezer as an influence.

[290] On June 11, 2010, the band released a new single, "Represent", as an "unofficial" anthem for the US Men's soccer team to coincide with the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

The Teen Choice Awards were established in 1999 to honor the year's biggest achievements in music, movies, sports and television, being voted by young people aged between 13 and 19.